Through the 60s and 70s World War II was big business for Hollywood, with some of the biggest stars of the day rounding out the casts. Here the cast is lead by Lee Marvin in one of his best tough guy roles of his career, and with supporting cast mates like Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland, and Telly Savalas, just to name a few, we're given a roller coaster ride that none of us would ever forget. Directed by the talented Robert Aldrich, he shows us how to perfectly blend drama, comedy and action in a way that is so entertaining that that you're left cheering these misfits and psychos.
An Army major is volunteered to lead a squad of convicted soldiers on a suicide mission behind enemy lines to kill off some of the Nazi brass. As each character is introduced you're left with the thought that almost everyone of them has some kind of redeeming quality, and as the story progresses you see that this is true for all except Savalas's character. You just can't fix insanity through military training. The use of the suicide mission isn't anything new to movies, but here it's used as the culmination of the story and the fun and enjoyment that we have watching the film comes from the training sequences and the development of the comradery between the soldiers.
This is a fun movie to watch, even though it's war film the violence isn't that bad and it's not in an over abundance. Two sequels were made years later on television and both were failures, there is a defiantly a formula on how to make a successful sequel but waiting to long, here two decades, and moving to a different media just doesn't help your project. If you've never seen this film, and you like war movies, then you should check this out, its fun entertainment from beginning to end, and your left with the feeling that these are the kinds of guys you want fighting by your side.
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